Faith Full of Rust
by RazielOmega
Summary: (She wants to say she'll stay, of course she'll stay, but she can't bring herself to lie.) [Nathan/Audrey, Claire]


**Characters/pairings: **Nathan/Audrey, Claire

**Spoilers: **Canon through 3.03, vague references to the rest of the season

**Warnings: **Mild suicidal ideation, semi self-injury

**Author's Notes: **Written for my **hc_bingo** prompts "kidnapped", "skeletons in the closet", "atonement", and "wild card (nausea)".

I have NO idea with this one. Seriously. It's set during season 3 but goes AU after 3.03.

(Also, I swear I'm not giving up on my other fic. RL has been slamming me recently, but I hope to be back soon!)

Song is "Wire to Wire" by Razorlight.

* * *

_she lives by disillusion's glow_  
_we go where the wild blood flows_  
_on our bodies we share the same scar_  
_love me, wherever you are_

**_xxx_**

The scar heals, mostly. It leaves an angry mark on her palm, brown and raised, a brand she runs her fingers over time and again. The only sign of her kidnapping, the only permanent injury she'd taken that day. She'd lived. Rosalyn had died.

Some days she wishes their places were reversed.

_**xxx**_

She can no longer eat meat.

Just the smell reminds her of that fire, the burning flesh of a person she'd hardly known. The civilian she'd promised, _promised_ she'd keep safe. The woman she'd failed.

The first time she walks into the Gull after her abduction she gags, nearly throws up everything the EMTs had forced into her. Nathan's hand on her back keeps her grounded, guiding her outside into the cool, fresh air. She gulps it in like she'd been drowning, stands braced against the rail and waits for her head to stop spinning, the world to settle.

Nathan takes her upstairs and it's upside down all over again. She's on the floor, somehow, knees digging into the wood and bits of shattered glass. Her life in pieces, all over a man long dead, a man she doesn't remember. A man who'd meant everything to Lucy, and who'd lost everything because of it.

She thinks of Nathan lying dead on the beach, his picture in the Herald the next day, and something inside her just _breaks_. He kneels beside her, takes her hands where they're trembling around a fallen picture frame and carefully extracts them. There's pain when he touches the slice in her wrist but she doesn't care, thinks of it as payment for Rosalyn. Squeezes her fingers into the gash until stars blur her vision and Nathan whispers her name, both their hands bloody.

Her blood soaks into the carpet, the wood, and Audrey knows it will stain. She's glad, somehow, that at least something from this night will remain permanent.

**__****xxx**  


Nathan walks away and Audrey feels the world crash in, her heart stop in her chest, her lungs contract until they seem to just vanish. This, then. This is her punishment. This is what she has to endure.

(She still doesn't know why, but somehow it feels right.)

But then Claire appears, a pile of folders in her arms. Her expression turns to one of concern when her gaze catches Audrey's, her gait slows, and Audrey shouldn't but she turns to the therapist, speaking before Claire can open her mouth.

"Do you have a minute?" The relief and worry that flash across the other woman's face are gone in an instant, but Audrey still catches them and it makes her ache. That Claire would even care, when she hardly knows Audrey all; that Audrey shouldn't let anyone else close to her, _can't_ let anyone else risk themselves like that.

But Claire nods with a tight smile, answers, "Of course," and Audrey fails all over again.

_**xxx**_

She loses Duke an hour later, and she's honestly not sure she's going to make it through that night.

His car drives off, a screeching of tires that grates on her ears, leaves her huddled on the stairs outside. She makes her way slowly up to her apartment, eyes darting around, painfully aware of how _alone_ she is. Vulnerable.

She flips all the lights on, desperate to drive out the shadows, to illuminate every corner of the room. As though she could somehow shine light on this town, on her life, her memories. As though _something_ could erase the darkness lurking inside her, the despair that ties her stomach in knots, chokes off her breath.

Her fingers fumble with her phone a half-dozen times throughout the night, when she can move her trigger finger off her gun. Once she even gets to Nathan's name, but _it isn't safe for him_. Instead she spends the time counting the nights she has left, over and over, a soothing mantra in her mind.

Morning comes and she hasn't moved, huddled on the floor with her back to the wall facing the door, gun seated on her lap. It's not until the sun filters through the window, blinding her, that she takes a breath and crawls off the floor.

She counts her sunrises, just once more.

_**xxx**_

A week passes, then two, every day closer to her deadline, and with every minute tasks she's always taken for granted become that much harder. Eating becomes a chore, then uncomfortable, then next to impossible. She drinks coffee like it's water, packed with as much cream and sugar as she can find. Chokes down what she can when people are around.

Nathan stops bringing her coffee. Duke stops dropping by for lunch. The closest person she has to a friend is Claire, who watches her with more concern each day. Audrey knows she must look like hell; her hands shake from lack of sleep, but every time she closes her eyes she just sees that silhouette, tastes the blood in her mouth, smells burning flesh. She jerks herself out of any doze in under an hour, nausea pressing on her throat, swallowing against bile and desperation.

Claire tries to talk with her about it, about _any_ of it, but all Audrey will discuss is Lucy, Sarah, the Colorado Kid. Concrete topics with definite answers. Mysteries that can be solved.

She doesn't mention Nathan's name once.

_**xxx**_

The bathroom smells of lavender perfume, a particular scent that sends Audrey back to that night.

_Rosalyn_.

She retches up what little she'd eaten that day, sits shaking on the floor for another ten minutes before there's an insistent knock at the door. Audrey opens it to find Claire standing there, an expression of mixed anger and anguish on her face. The therapist bites, "My office, now," before Audrey gets a word out.

Audrey sits in her usual chair, arms tucked around her body protectively, surreptitiously shifting to face the door. Claire raises an eyebrow at her, neatly crosses her legs and states, "I'm pulling you off active duty until you decide to talk to me."

Audrey wants to scream. To cry, to plead, to _explain_. That she needs this, she needs to be _here_, helping the Troubled. Keeping the people she cares about safe. Paying for sins she doesn't yet understand but knows are there, written in scars on her body that she doesn't remember.

Instead she stands and walks out the door without a word.

_**xxx**_

He finds her on the beach. (_She's surprised he wanted to find her at all...) _Audrey feels her entire body tense, uncertain why he's here. Her shoulders ache at the stress, a shooting pain in her head blurring her vision for a moment, and she almost hopes he yells to distract her from the pain.

He settles beside her instead, close enough that she can feel his body heat. They sit in silence for a while, his body humming with a tension she shrinks from.

"Claire's worried about you," he states eventually, staring out at the ocean. A pause, then a softer, "I'm worried about you." Audrey looks at him for the first time in days, notes lines of tension around his eyes, his mouth drawn into a thin line. And it hits her, then, that he's not taking this any better than she is. That her pushing him away is hurting him as much as it's killing her.

She wraps her arms around her stomach, curling in onto herself, swallowing a sob. She can't let herself break, not now.

"Audrey," Nathan murmurs, and his voice is gentler than she's ever heard it. "Audrey, _please_."

She gasps in a breath as he rests a hand on her back, warm and steady. Stares out at the sea and tries to blank her mind, to focus only on his touch, to forget this horrific freak show that is her life. Mutilated bodies, burned out corpses, stolen body parts. And Nathan, Nathan is right in the middle of it. It scares her more than the rest ever could.

"I can't," she chokes, tucks her knees closer to rest her chin on them. Inhale, exhale. Over and over, Nathan's hand moving in time with her breathing. He doesn't push her, doesn't say another thing, and it's the only reason she doesn't break down completely. He knows her that well, at least.

He only speaks when the sun disappears below the horizon and she starts to shiver, a gentle, "C'mon, Parker," that settles her thoughts somehow, calms her nerves. It's almost normal. He slips out of his jacket and wraps it around her shoulders as she stands, stumbles. His muscles are so tense they're quivering.

She makes it to the car without collapsing and counts that a victory.

_**xxx**_

The door of the Bronco slams like a bullet in her ears, wind whistling through cracks in the window. The sun is too bright, the lingering smell of Chinese food nauseating. Audrey wonders how long the human body can function without sleep, decides she doesn't really want to know. Less than 49 days, she'd bet on that.

She doesn't notice they've passed the turnoff for the Gull for a good few minutes, finally really _looks_ out the window and blinks.

"Where are we going?" Her voice cracks and she's too damned tired to care. Nathan glances at her, eyes tinged red and knuckles white where he grips the steering wheel.

"My place," he answers tightly.

She has no idea what to make of that, and she's far too exhausted to try to work out his motivation, too numb to worry about his emotional state, too shaken to pick a fight. So she just says quietly, "You don't have to do that." He _looks _at her, a combination of disbelief and amusement and unreserved concern that wrenches in her gut, brings tears pressing on her eyelids again.

He says nothing for a few minutes, finally asks in a carefully measured voice, "When's the last time you slept? Ate?" She shrugs absently, turning away and closing her eyes. She can _hear_ his teeth grinding. "Jeezus, Parker."

It's the last thing either of them say.

_**xxx**_

She climbs out of the Bronco and promptly passes out.

When she wakes, head aching more than it should have a right to, it's to Claire's fingers on her pulse-point, the doctor's lips pursed in a razor-straight line, eyebrows a sharp V. _Shit_. Nathan hovers over her shoulder, face etched with so much concern that Audrey can't help feeling a flash of guilt. It wasn't supposed to _be_ like this. This was supposed to _help_ Nathan, not hurt him.

"What the _fuck_, Parker." His voice is rougher than she's ever heard it and she realizes there are tears on his cheeks and god, it _wasn't supposed to be like this. _

Claire's mouth tightens impossibly and she glares over her shoulder. "Nathan, why don't you get Audrey some water. Or gatorade, if you have it." His mouth opens and closes a few times, but Claire's glare only intensifies.

"Fine," he mutters, stalking off, and it _hurts_ somehow. He's angry with her, and he has every right, but some part of her shrivels up a little smaller and she feels like the breath is knocked out of her, like her lungs just collapse. She gasps, chokes on air, feels Claire's hand on the back of her neck carefully lifting her head a little, resting a pillow behind it.

"Breathe," the psychiatrist orders tightly, kind and angry all at once. "Does anything hurt?" Audrey's gasps turn to choking laughter, wants to answer _everything_ but can't get a word out. Claire grabs an ice pack from the floor where it's already left a sizeable puddle of water, and Audrey wonders just how long she was out. It's freezing against her scalp, shocking but somehow grounding. "Nathan says you hit your head," Claire explains, shining a pen light in Audrey's eyes before she knows what's happening. "Are you dizzy? Nauseous?"

Audrey swallows, rasps, "Relatively speaking?" Claire's jaw tightens, a fleeting look of anguish crossing her face. "'m fine," Audrey tries, thinks the therapist's teeth might crack from the pressure and amends, "I'm… the same."

Nathan returns, saving her from further interrogation with a bottle of something disgustingly blue. Claire's eyes don't leave Audrey as she states, "I don't think she has a concussion, but she was out for long enough to worry me. Even if I hadn't been worried before."

"I-"

"It could just be exhaustion," Claire steamrolls right over her, looking up at Nathan. "But either way, she should be in a hospital. She's dehydrated, fatigued-"

"I'm right here," Audrey growls, and Claire's eyes snap to her with an intensity that shocks her.

"Well forgive me if I don't exactly trust you to take care of yourself right now," the doctor snaps.

It takes everything Audrey has not to just burst out crying.

Claire's face softens. "I'm sorry," she sighs, reaching out to straighten the blanket where it's slipped off Audrey. She takes the bottle of gatorade from Nathan, hands it to Audrey with an order to drink. They both watch her, so intensely she wants to scream.

Finally, the doctor states, "I'll let you stay here, but you need to take a sedative. And you need to _rest_."

Claire leaves, eventually, after Nathan promises to call if anything happens and Audrey swears she'll eat and sleep.

(She's lying.)

_**xxx**_

She wakes to muffled crying.

It's dark out, but Nathan's hunched form is silhouetted in the window. His shoulders tremble, head in his hands.

Audrey hadn't thought her heart could splinter any further, but it just shatters.

She pulls herself up slowly, carefully. The last thing she needs is to pass out again. She makes her way to Nathan, places her hands on his shoulders and slides them down as his arms automatically raise to encircle her, protectively, holding her as though she were made of glass.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, sinking onto his lap, head on his shoulder as he clutches at her desperately. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"You can't leave me." The words are muffled and broken and she thinks she might've imagined them, but he repeats them, once and again and again. His fingers ghost across her skin, one hand buried in her hair and she almost moans, bites her tongue and presses her face into the crook of his neck and _breathes_.

(She wants to say she'll stay, of course she'll stay, but she can't bring herself to lie.)

_**xxx**_

She dreams of the dark again, the flashlight in her eyes and the smell of burning flesh. This time, though, this time is different. She's standing in front of the fire, watches Nathan's flesh melt and the confused expression on his face as he stutters, "Can't feel it." He reaches for her, fingertips brushing her arm and he _screams_, an anguished howl she echoes, tearing from her throat like a thousand knives.

She jerks awake to darkness again, reaching for a gun that isn't there, clawing at her skin where Nathan had touched her. Her nails find purchase, gash painfully into her flesh and it's not enough, it's nowhere near enough, it will _never_ be enough to mirror the pain in that cry.

Hands grip hers, iron tight. A voice washes over her, familiar and soothing but scared, so scared. Her heart beats fast, far too fast, pumping blood sluggishly across her arm as something presses down against the wound, lancing pain through her skin. She drinks it in, savoring the reminder she's here, she's real, she's still capable of feeling. (Of feeling _pain_.)

Her eyes focus, eventually, fixate on Nathan's face and hold him there, memorizing his features. Safe, whole, unbroken.

His words still make no sense, but they gradually lull her to sleep.

_**xxx**_

She takes a week off. ("Takes" is an overstatement. Forced leave of absence, she tells Claire petulantly.)

She talks to Claire; she eats and she sleeps and she still wakes up screaming and shaking, wrestles phantoms in the half-dark. (She no longer sleeps without a lamp, but only gentle yellow lights.)

Nathan refuses to leave her couch. She's given up fighting him, just dumps a blanket on his head every night and crawls into bed. Listens as he quietly checks the room, redoing the locks on her doors and windows. The whisper of cloth on metal at his hip is undefinably comforting.

She wakes every night screaming. He pretends to sleep until she slips out for breakfast with Duke (Claire-mandated), and by the time she returns to shower he's always gone.

_**xxx**_

She waits for things to get better.

They don't.

_**xxx**_

Her arm heals. (She notes with satisfaction that the red patches of skin look like burn scars. It's fitting.) She returns to active duty with less than a month left, her fate weighing heavy on every cell of her being.

When she walks into her office it feels like coming home and she finds herself blinking away tears, hand running along her desk. She fingers the coffee mug Nathan had given her and feels a pang in her chest so sharp she almost whimpers, drops the cup with a resounding clatter.

She _doesn't want to go_.

There's a rap on her door and Nathan walks in, eyeing the mug on the floor with raised eyebrows. But he says nothing, just holds out her badge and gun with that small smile she's grown to love so much. Her fingers brush his palm when she takes them and his breath catches, eyelids fluttering a little as his pupils dilate.

It stops her cold.

This, all of this, she can _fix_ it. She feels it in her bones, her weary body. The nausea in her gut, a stabbing pain in her head that grows each day. Nathan's Trouble, _all_ the Troubles – she knows, with an inexplicable certainty, that she can fix them. That somehow her suffering is necessary, an atonement for sins long forgotten, a blood price for those she fails to save.

Nathan, though – Nathan she _can_ save. That she knows with an irrefutable certainty as well.

(She remembers the way he'd clutched at her, begging her to stay, and knows that in the act of saving him she'll break him irreparably.)

(She remembers that she doesn't want to go.)

She takes her gun and badge with a soft, "Thanks." Glances around at the piles of paperwork covering her desk, the board covered with notices, and feels a panic set in because there _isn't enough time_.

Nathan's fingers grip hers gently, one thumb absently running across the marks on her forearm. "Parker," he says quietly. She can't look at him, eyes darting around the room, memorizing every detail. Maybe, if she tries hard enough, if she _brands_ these things into her brain, she might remember. Maybe if she maps these moments on her body with scars they won't fade so easily.

Nathan's grip tightens insistently, and he says her name again, so gently. Touches her chin with his free hand, tilting her face up toward his, and then all she can see is his skin _melting_, his eyes dark with pain and accusation as he touches her and she flinches away, swallowing bile. She won't hurt him again, not like that. She _won't_.

"We'll figure this out," he tells her, and she almost laughs because he _believes _it, so firmly.

(She wants to believe it too.)

(She knows he's lying, even if he doesn't.)

_**xxx**_

She waits.

_**xxx**_

_Time_, Claire says, when Audrey finally tells her about the dreams. Healing from a trauma takes _time_.

Audrey doesn't _have_ time.

It sits in her stomach like a rock, this knowledge that her last thoughts of Nathan will be of him burned, broken. That she can't force her mind past that, not matter how hard she tries. Only a few weeks left, and they'll be full of mutilated bodies and burned corpses and these _dreams_.

She feels sick.

"I can't just snap my fingers and fix you," Claire tells her gently. "No matter how much I wish I could."

Audrey closes her eyes. "Lie to me," she whispers, childlike and pathetic and she doesn't care, she _can't_ care. Claire's face softens unbearably and the therapist looks away, head bowed in a position of such defeat that Audrey almost cries.

"You don't know that you don't have time," Claire tells her eventually, raising her head to look Audrey in the eye. _Lie_. "If anyone can figure this out, Audrey, it's you and Nathan." _Lie._

Audrey smiles and nods.

_**xxx**_

Nathan greets her with a steaming mug of coffee and a small grin.

It gets a little better.

_**xxx**_

He takes a bullet in the shoulder, chasing down a member of the Guard. It's hardly a scratch but the EMTs cart him off to the hospital anyway, leaving Audrey behind to clean up the mess.

She throws up the minute he's gone.

He corners her in her office later that day, one arm bandaged. Audrey tries to leave, muttering something about a session with Claire but he blocks her path, concern strewn across his face. She retreats, resists the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of this situation, at the fact that he'd been _shot_ and he's the one worrying.

He takes a step toward her even as she backs away, reaching for her as she chokes, "Stop." There's a flash of hurt on his face, mirroring the devastated look he'd had all those weeks ago when all of this had started, but _anything_ is better than the pain in her dream. Anything.

His voice is steady when he asks, "Why?", although she can feel the tension that runs through it. Audrey shakes her head, takes another step back and finds herself pressed against her desk, cornered, and still Nathan comes closer. "_Why?_" he demands again, anger and fear and something else, something so full of self-reproach and hate that Audrey can't stand to hear it. She wants to cover her ears, to curl in a ball and bury her face and shut the world out, just for a moment.

"It's not safe," she whispers, arms crossed protectively across her stomach like she can hold herself in, _together._ Like she can keep the danger that she seems to bring to everyone she loves contained. "_You're_ not safe." He takes a step closer and she shakes her head, states, "I'll _hurt_ you," like it explains everything.

His face blanks for a moment, then floods with a rage she hasn't seen since Max Hanson. "What the hell do you think you're doing _now_?" he growls, and that – that just breaks her. Because she has _no fucking idea_, because she's tried _everything_ to keep him safe and nothing has worked. Maybe nothing ever will. Maybe this is her ultimate punishment, to be helpless to save the man she loves.

"I'm trying to _save_ you," she keens, desperate for him to _understand_. His eyes flick to her arm, her palm, and his expression hardens.

"Well _don't_," he mimics.

She almost lets him walk away.

Almost.

But he's close, so close, and her hand finds its way to his stomach, ghosting across the place where he'd had a stake in his gut because of _her_. He stares at her hand, vague understanding making his face almost comical. "I watched you die," she whispers, sees him burning in vivid flashes. "I can't do that again, Nathan. I _can't_."

He raises one hand to cover hers, carefully, so carefully, murmurs, "Then how can you ask me to do the same?"

She feels her face crumple, tears she's been holding back for weeks tumbling down her cheeks, and she wants to scream _because I love you_ but the words won't come, only a sob in their place. Nathan's hands cup her cheeks, thumbs brushing at her tears as he presses his forehead to hers and she thinks he might be crying too.

"I won't lose you," he chokes, as she wraps her arms around his neck and clings with every ounce of strength she has. "I _can't_."

_Lie._

Then his lips are pressed to hers, warm and salty and grounding, her back screaming where it's pressed against the edge of her desk, and she can almost believe.

_**xxx**_

"We still have time," he murmurs into her hair, body twined around hers, pressing every possible inch of skin together.

It's only half a lie.

_**xxx**_

She wakes up screaming, again.

Nathan holds her hands down as she writhes, sobbing, his eyes accusing her in her mind still. She wrenches free to cup his face, runs her fingers along his skin and finds him whole, safe.

"I'm here," he whispers, pulling her so close she can't tell his body from hers. "You're here."

_Truth_.

_**xxx**_

She's up with the sun, watches lazily from Nathan's arms as it starts glinting through her window. Counts on two hands the number of sunrises she has left.

He stirs, arms tightening automatically around her, fingers running along her arm as she hums with pleasure.

"'m not letting you go," he mumbles sleepily, pressing a kiss to her forehead and tucking her under his chin.

She believes him.

___**xxx**_

_how do you love on a night without feelings?_  
_she says "love, i hear sound, i see fury"_  
_she says "love's not a hostile condition"_  
_love me, wherever you are_

* * *

Comments are love! =)


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